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The Sagrada Família takes its final shape

In the century since Antoni Gaudí died, his wild design has been obsessively realized, creating the world’s tallest church—and an endlessly debated icon.

According to Puig Boada, when Gaudí started working on the Sagrada Família, he would arrive at the site each day in a carriage, wearing a short beige overcoat with large boots, and peremptorily give orders without dismounting. A decade later, the critic Antoni Bonet declared that it was a mistake to treat as holy writ the sort of books and photographs that I saw Faulí clutching, because Gaudí constantly rethought his project: “His mind-set was purely creative, which meant that the very sketches he had made himself were becoming outdated.” More recently, the influential Catalan city planner Oriol Bohigas denounced the building as “a worldwide embarrassment.” The architecture critic Rowan Moore has condemned the decision to keep building, writing in the Guardian that “Gaudí’s architecture was, living and responsive, whereas posthumous simulation of his ideas makes them fixed and lifeless.” The person close to the project told me that this quality often served Faulí well—“the archbishop thinks he’s a marvel”—but added that his soft spot as a manager was an eagerness to make happy “the young people who tell him, ‘Let’s put elevators in all the towers.’ ”

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